


The Engagement Party

by tismabel



Category: The Alienist (TV), The Alienist - Caleb Carr
Genre: Also everyone is very polite, Angst and Smut, Laszlo is manipulative and John is kind of pathetic, M/M, Pre-Series, and then they have sex but it doesn't really help matters, mostly just pwp, they both obviously have issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 09:33:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13784676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tismabel/pseuds/tismabel
Summary: In idle moments when he let his thoughts wander too much, John found a smile would play at the edge of his mouth. He didn’t know exactly why, but the thought that he might be the only man alive to have had the feel of Laszlo’s prick in hand delighted him. That was until it terrified him in equal measure and the smile would slide off his face like butter from a warm knife.





	The Engagement Party

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-series. John is newly engaged and Laszlo is not impressed.

_New York, 1890._

It was six days after their engagement announcement that John Moore and his fiancé came to call on his old friend Laszlo Kriezler.

They drank tea and discussed the unseasonably warm fall.  The conversation was stilted, an unspoken tension nawed at the edges of decorum. There was a recent infection in their relationship, one that neither of them could discuss in the present company.

John wasn’t quite sure what would be awaiting he and his fiancé when they arrived, but the good doctor was uncharacteristically avoidant of any topic that might veer into dangerous waters. Laszlo moved in small precise gestures, his fingers light on his cup and saucer, betraying nothing. John couldn’t quite meet his eyes.

The visit was a formality as John saw it. Demanded of by their long shared history and close family ties.

John invited Laszlo to supper the following week, and Laszlo smoothly declined, a medical conference his excuse. The lie went unacknowledged by them both and John was grateful to escape, hastily collecting his hat and coat as he and his fiancee exited onto Park Avenue.

He didn’t see Laszlo for seven months.

 

xx

In idle moments when he let his thoughts wander too much, John found a smile would play at the edge of his mouth. He didn’t know exactly why, but the thought that he might be the only man alive to have had the feel of Laszlo’s prick in hand delighted him. That was until it terrified him in equal measure and the smile would slide off his face like butter from a warm knife.

 

xx

The engagement party was the talk of the knickerbocker society that week. The attendees dazzled in an array of finery that tomorrow’s paper would describe in florrid detail. The handsome couple mingled with crowds of well wishers, working their way along the presentation line.

John had never found anything so tedious in all his days.

It was the ripe end of the evening when Laszlo and he finally crossed paths. Obviously here only under the direction of his mother, and John’s grandmother no doubt. The doctor looked somewhat startled to find himself face to face with John, seemingly no way of avoiding the interaction. But he recovered quickly and held his champagne glass aloft.

"To your love," Laszlo said. His raised his left hand in a toast, the other lame arm loose at his side. "To the lovely and the beloved." The words came out like a curse.

John had imbibed enough that evening that a foggy cloud appeared to envelope his vision. His liquored senses took in the form of his old friend, and momentarily he had the strongest impulse to hit him. Not just for the preceding absence of several months, but the other unvoiced things that sat like lead in Johns gut.

The flash of violence passed but he could still feel the overwhelming desire to muss up Laszlo’s perfectly coiffured facade, rough up his overly tailored suit with his bare hands. Affect him as he himself felt affected.

Instead he said, "You should not have come," and then stopped because he was drunk. His thoughts were tangled and unreliable. He couldn’t understand why he was suddenly shaking, but thought it must have been the alcohol.

"Then I will take my leave" the doctor curtly informed him and moved to turn away from John.

John affected a grimace of a smile on his face and took a half bow. He felt like he was standing on the edge of a great iceberg, the edge crumbling and a wide precipice rushing towards him.

Laszlo left John standing alone and as he watched him go he wished he could follow after. This estrangement was as unbearable as it was unavoidable. Their once strong bond shaken to its foundations through one careless act. A moment of furtive submission to long building desire, the consequence of which spooled out unendingly like a sweater thread caught on a bramble.

Suddenly he was weary, too heavy hearted to continue this jolly act for the sake of his family and betrothed.

But the gaggle of relatives and acquaintances awaited him, and so he took a deep breath, and smiled.

 

xx

Later that night John dreamed of the sandy and weeded bottom of a deep lake, his brother was there, yelling at him noiselessly. His arms flailing about in the reeds as his clothes billowed around his pale form. John kept trying to pull him towards the surface but he was very heavy and he wouldn’t come easily. Warm golden light streamed down from above, but it only reached so far into the cold weeds.

Awareness came in the form of a ringing in his ears. John sucked in great lungfuls of oxygen and attempted to remember where he actually was.

It took him a moment to recognise that the trilling was not the water pressure at the bottom of the lake, but the front doorbell ringing. His muddle of thoughts sharpened and solidified and he grabbed his robe.

As he passed the clock in the hall he wondered who on earth would be calling at four in the morning.

Then came a moment John thought must be peculiar to the bleak small hours of the morning. Recognising the slumped form on his doorstep, he was sure that his friend had passed from this world to the next. In the shadows and unreliable moonlight, he couldn't see that Laszlo was breathing until he was close enough to touch.

A scene flashed of silent funeral processions and brittle crepe flowers scattered on dark ebony coffins. John’s visual imagination had always been somewhat overactive, and through force of habit he pushed the maudeline fantasy aside.

Laszlo lived still and John poked a toe into his side. A hitching half-groan sound, and Laszlo’s eyes fluttered open.

"My dear John," Laszlo said, and then, "my friend,"

From the step Laszlo reach up and gripped his wrist. Solid contact made them both suddenly gasp. All of the seated man’s strength went into pulling John down to him. John’s whole world canted to the side, his balance lost both physically and mentally.

It was backwards. This didn’t make sense. John was the one who voiced these things. Held out his hand in conciliation to the taciturn Laszlo. It was unfathomable that Laszlo would come to him. That was their unspoken agreement after what happened.

"You need to come in," John said looking nervously down the deserted street, his tone edged with the desperation of a society wife trying to avoid a scandalous public scene.  

Laszlo’s eyes stared up at John, seeming to drink him up in huge gulps.  John couldn’t bare this happening here, needed to cloister them away from the prying eyes of his grandmother’s neighbours. Give them the privacy they needed for whatever was about to happen.

They went inside. Laszlo swayed in the hallway, reaching for the wall. John hovered behind him, ready to spring into action should he stumble on the way down the hall. John hoping the other occupants in the household, his grandmother and the housekeeper, had not heard them. But rationally he knew they would not, his grandmother was hard of hearing, and Mrs Lees slept like the dead.

They reached the parlour and Laszlo leaned against the high edge of the settee.  The doctor’s hand was clawing his collar off his neck and John stared at the revealed line of his throat.

John had never seen Laszlo like this. Unkempt and blurry eyed. Certainly the man was not without his quirks, but John had always chalked up Laszlo’s peculiarity to his European background. And he had never seemed anything less than fully in control of his faculties.

He couldn’t smell any alcohol. Could only presume that Laszlo had imbibed some other substance readily available from his clinic.

“What on earth have you taken man? Do I need to call a doctor?”

“I am a doctor and therefore able to assist myself should I have need.”

The ludicrous statement hung in the air and seemed to break some spell. Laszlo suddenly seemed aware of how far from the bounds of civil discourse he’d strayed with this behaviour. His eyes slid away from John, unable to face the man anymore.

"You must pardon me," Laszlo said without looking up at him. "I'm afraid I have had a very long night."

There was an aching sadness in those words. Like the inevitability of loss was beyond reversal. Laszlo shoulders slumped and his normally upright and energetic frame deflated before John’s eyes.

John knew Laszlo’s professional subject of enquiry was the disordered functioning of the human mind. And it occurred to him just then that he might make the perfect test subject. Because there was definitely a disorder in him, one that had burrowed deep into his soul. At least when it came to how he behaved toward Laszlo.

This disorder had robbed him of reason in that very moment and he took hold of Laszlo’s shoulders and turned him, and then pressed forward. He covered Laszlo’s mouth with his own and held tight.

 

xx

John was certain he should be admitted to an asylum, he thought. For only a madman would have the gall to do what he was doing.

Over and over again he kissed Laszlo, turning him this way and that. Taking different parts of him in his mouth and describing the texture and contours of the other man with his tongue.

He hoped this time would be different to the last.

For the last time they had reached this point, almost a year previously, he had just got through the complicated business of unfastening the good doctors breaches. His reward for completing this difficult task was the freedom to run his hand, or mouth, or whatever bodily appendage he wished, along the silken skin of Laszlo’s attentive prick.

He’d just set to licking his way from the tip down to the base when he was suddenly being shoved away.

A startled and confused look contorted the features of his friends alway serious and collected face.

Despite all the doctors experience with sexually adventurous and perverse patients, John had never before reflected on the fact that Laszlo himself might be entirely _inexperienced_ in those affairs.

John, for his own part, had been fully engaged in the activity and determined to continue the exercise with gusto. In desperation he’d tried to calm Laszlo, saying, "It fine, it's all right. This is all right" as if this litany might shape the next few moments.

But he could tell the man was beyond his limits. The earlier rush of lust they had both succumbed to was currently engaged in full scale warfare with Laszlo’s exquisitely refined aloofness.

Laszlo had said, "Just, please, I can’t. I won’t.” and then after, “We'll speak in the morning." His good hand clutching protectively at his trousers as he pulled them up and beat a hasty escape.

But they didn’t speak in the morning, and all that went on that afternoon remained unspoken of, festering like an untended wound.

 

xx

So here they were now on the settee in Johns’ grandmothers’ parlour. At around just the same stage that the last story took a bad turn.

Though addled with lust, John was still looking for warning signs that Laszlo might be getting cold feet.

Never once did any thought enter his head of his fiancé, home with his future in-laws, resting peacefully after a long evening of dancing and celebration.

Instead John was a man possessed with resolve. His goal was to have Laszlo desperate and pleading for his ministrations. This seemed imminently achievable, if the way Laszlo panted and moved his hips in a needy rocking motion was any indication. John determined to continue on this course of kissing, licking and sucking until he achieved his ends.

Laszlo’s forehead was against the buttery smooth upholstery, which was becoming slightly damp from his breath. His shirt was half-open and shoved up under his arms. John ran his hands all down the length of his bared back, mapping the long muscles and knobs of Laszlo’s spine.

Suddenly the doctor reached back and took grip of John’s hip with his stronger hand, found a proper purchase and pulled him down to him. John bent to mouth at Laszlo’s neck, lightly biting below his ear. He only just heard the breathless murmur of "I want you to," and then “please,”

John tightened his embrace, almost frantic with the need to get the rest of their clothes off. Laslo was panting, his hand clawing at the edge of the cushion as John pulled his trousers the rest of the way down.

After that John’s thoughts distilled down to a single stream of awareness: Laszlo below him, John teasing with spit slick fingers, and then pushing and stretching.  His hips at Laslo’s back, easing into him and groaning.  Sinking deeper and laying himself over the other man. The sweat and aroma of their bodies working against each other.

John lost track of things after that. He was utterly affected, overcome with arousal and emotion that mingled together into something he’d never experienced before. Sure he’d had plenty of action of this sort before. Quick and hard fucks with other young men in seedier New York establishments. But Laszlo’s body moved below him like it was built for John alone. Each stroke was so deep, John thought surely it would be their last, but the next one turned out to be even better. His mouth was on the side of Laszlo’s throat, biting then worrying the same spot with his tongue. Laszlo began to cry out, and John slipped his hand around the other man’s prick and that was all it took. Laszlo arched and spasmed and John soon tipped over the edge with him, spilling into him with a few final thrusts.

 

xx

Afterwards, when they had both stopped shaking, Laszlo had levered himself up and set about tidying his clothes, pulling them back on in quick, practiced gestures. John was still draped accross the settee, his legs sprawled, the sweat cooling on his skin after his exertions.

All sorts of images were filling his mind of what would come next. Him on his knees, with Laszlo’s grip crushing his collar. Laszlo spread face down on John's bed, asleep with exhaustion.

This one time was never going to be enough for him, he knew. He would want Laszlo like this every day. And not just Laszlo’s body, but all of him. The complicated, prickly contours of his mind. His refined culture and taste. John would gorge himself but never be sated. It both thrilled and terrified him.

He was just about to suggest they wash up and grab a drink, when Laszlo spectacularly broke the silence.

“Tell me this will you John. Do you think your guilt will lead you to confess to your fiance the particulars to this evening? Or do you see this as a regular clandestine activity to amuse you between society appointments and your more, shall we call them, adventurous reconnoitres below twenty-ninth street? I suppose you’ll have a strategy to rationalise these activities within your own psychic scaffolding”

John boggled at him, all the wind seemingly sucked out of his lungs with each astounding question.

“Should one surmise then, in light of your own infidelity, that the same standards of behaviour should be ascribed to all people, up to and including your fiance?”

It was an altogether fascinating feeling, John decided. The sudden rush of adrenaline from exquisite sexual release combined with pure shameful anger.  His mind felt like an attraction at PT Barnum’s, it’s freakish recesses suddenly exposed to the world, but entirely untrustworthy and dangerous.

For his own part Laszlo seemed to be braced for an outburst, his bodies’ stance open and welcoming to whatever violence was about to be enacted on it. There was a pathetic and somewhat desperate look on his face, which at any other time would clearly read to John as “please have mercy upon me, for I know not what I do.” But in that moment there was only rage echoing through his mind, the chords of irrationality plucked by expert fingers.

 

xx

Afterward he woke up in Central Park. it took him some time to surmise that was his location, the dewey grass sparkling in the mid-morning sun. His head pounded as though it had surgical instruments embedded in it. His knuckles were bloody and raw.

Slowly he pulled himself together, taking stock of his bare feet, cold and wet. They were fairly cut up by the time he made his way over to fifth avenue.

Mrs Lees, the housekeeper, questioned why the front door had been left wide open for all the city to trample through and loot the house. He barely had wits enough to come up with an emergency assignment to attend to in the early hours. Apologised for leaving the door ajar for the breeze to push all the way open. She was kind enough not to comment on his bare feet and attire, or the state that the settee in the parlour must have been left in.

Hours later when he could finally stomach the smell of food, his grandmother asked how his evening had been after she left the party.

John couldn't answer for a long moment, stupefied and not knowing his mind at all. His body ached with the sense memory of Laszlo’s skin against his. All that nascent feeling, dashed to pieces like a ship against the shoals. A quick righteous flare of anger sparked to life in his stomach and he grabbed hold of it frantically, prayed that it would grow big enough to obscure everything else.

He would not go running back this time, as he was sure the doctor expected. There was only so much debasement and humiliation one man could take. As he saw it he’d be married soon and have that whole experience of nuptiality to occupy his days.

There would be no cause for them to cross paths and draw out the matter further. Feeling some levity for the first time that day John picked up a piece of date loaf to butter.

“Well it’s certainly an exciting time for you my dear.” His grandmother declared, pouring coffee into his cup. “You’ll have all the preparations ahead for November, and don’t you start your new position next month? What did you say you would be doing exactly? Sounded quite macabre if I recall.”

“I’ll be a crime scene sketch artist, Grandmother. With the Post,” John sipped his coffee with a smile. “And I’m sure it will present me with all sorts of exciting opportunities.”

 

fin

**Author's Note:**

> I did set about writing some Laszlo/Mary but somehow this came out. Go figure.


End file.
